Iraqi government officials see Saudi Arabia as the biggest threat to the integrity of their fledgling democratic state, leaked US state department cables reveal. The Iraqi concerns represent a fundamental divergence from the American and British view of Iran as arch-predator in Iraq.

The reaction to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange tells us all we need to know about the total corruption of our “modern” world, which in fact is a throwback to the Dark Ages.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I really think that usually we Europeans are a little bit arrogant, like we are the model of tolerance and so on. Now something horrible has happened, and what is really worrying is that it’s not only the countries, the parts of Europe, that we usually associate with intolerance, like southeastern Europe.

In the case of South Ossetia, the militarization of this para-state is slower than in the case of Abkhazia because of the strategic factor mentioned above. Nevertheless, Tskhinvali is also a part of a military traty with Russia that enables Russian troops to be deployed on its territory for the next 49 years.

The Euro-Atlantic governments proclaim their “democracy” as proof of their absolute right to intervene in the affairs of the rest of the world. A crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.

It is the European Central Bank that should be printing money on a mass scale to purchase government debt, not the US Federal Reserve. Unless the ECB takes fast and dramatic action, it risks destroying the currency it is paid to manage, and allowing a political catastrophe to unfold in Europe.

While there is no obvious reason why Serbia should join NATO, there still is good reason for some sort of an association with the EU. But, perhaps instead of full, formal membership, it would be more beneficial to establish an arrangement based on specific and very carefully and more narrowly defined economic, trade and financial interests

Therefore, the failure of the Kurds to form a united front and weakness of Kurdish nationalism and external developments shaped the modern history of the Kurds. As an immediate result, the Ottoman Kurdistan, which was a united entity for almost 400 years, was about to be divided among three new national states.

What is to stop U.S. banks from creating $1 trillion, 10 trillion or even 50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world? This is the game that is being played today. Today’s global financial breakdown is the price for the Fed refusing to accept a prime axiom of banking: Debts that cannot be paid, won’t be.

Ben Bernanke is in a real fix. His quantitative easing program is designed to boost stock prices, lower bond yields, and weaken the dollar. Should he go ahead and launch his program anyway knowing it could backfire and further damage his credibility or scrap the whole deal and move on to Plan B? The truth is, he has no choice.